Service for Elise
Birmingham
Rev. Matthew M. Fry
March 25, 2007
Norcross
Presbyterian Church
Let us pray.
O God, who gave us birth, you are ever more ready to hear than we are to pray. You know our needs before we ask, and our ignorance in asking. Show us now your grace, that as we face the mystery of death we may see the light of eternity. Speak to us once more your solemn message of life and of death. Help us to live as those who are prepared to die. And when our days here are ended, enable us to die as those who go forth to live, so that living or dying, our life may be in Jesus Christ our risen Lord. Amen.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns. / “Be still and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.” The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
Isaiah 40.1-5, 28-31
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
Psalm 116.1-2
I Love the Lord, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live.
Elise Dorea Birmingham, born 19 September 1943. Baptized into the Church Universal when she was a child. Born into the Church triumphant on Sunday the 11th of February, 2007.
I didn’t know Elise before she became bedridden. I did visit with her and Ken quite a bit. And I got to know her through Ken and the Birminghams. And this was in part, the stuff I was told about Elise. Elise was a fun, outgoing, generous, caring, adventurous and tender person who was a great mother, a wonderful spouse and companion, a faithful church member who gave of not only her money, but of her many and varied gifts in service to the church. She cared deeply about education, and was a Sunday School teacher for children. And she cared profoundly for her family, for you and for her parents as they became near death.
But I have also learned much about her by watching and listening to you, her family. Ken, you said things like, “She taught me to be generous by her generosity.” And anyone who knows you gets a quick realization that you are who you are in no small part because of her influence on your life. Rick, you are incredibly intelligent and of independent mind. And you are smart enough to know that at least some of that came from Elise. Nancy, you are one of the most free-spirited yet grounded people I have met. I don’t think that came totally free from Elise. Tom, you are loyal and dependable, among many other great qualities. So much of that came from Elise, I’m sure of it. And Ken, you said that when you all got married that Elise really took on a project by marrying you. If that is the case, then she did one heck of a great job, because Ken, you are one of the good ones, one of the great, intelligent, generous, delightful people in the world that needs more people like that. The family that she leaves behind is a wonderful legacy and witness to what a special person Elise was in your midst. You all are great testimony to how great of a woman Elise was. Her greatest qualities live on in you. She will be missed, but her memory can never be too far from you, for it resides in you.
The Lord be with you. Lift up your hearts. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
(or) Let us pray.
O God of grace, you have given us new and living hope in Jesus Christ. We thank you that by dying Christ destroyed the power of death, and by rising from the grave opened the way to eternal life. Help us to know that because he lives, we shall live also; and that nothing shall separate us from your love in Christ Jesus our Lord. We thank you for the life of Elise. She will be a part of our memories for as long as we live. We thank you for the legacy of care and love she has handed down to us. Let her memory live in us, as she now lives in you. And now we pray the words he taught us, as we pray, Our Father who art in heaven, hollowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.
From the New Testament:
John 11:25-26
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
John 14:19, 1-6, 27
In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live, / “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. Any you know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” / Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels,
but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries
and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove
mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give
away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may
boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love
is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or
rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or
resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices
in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. But as for
prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will
cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we
know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when
the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When
I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I
reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to
childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then
we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know
fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith,
hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? / No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
As we continue to experience the Word of God together, Let us pray.
Source of all true wisdom, calm the troubled waters of our hearts, and still all other voices but your own, that we may hear and obey what you tell us in your Word, through the power of your Spirit. Amen
On Ash Wednesday, I preached the message that we Christians always remember on Ash Wednesday, that death comes for us all, none of us gets excused. I said something like, “Death rears it’s ugly head.” Ken and I talked after that, and we realized that in this case, death was not unwelcome, but was a release. Elise was struggling. She was not the Elise that taught you through her life to value intelligence, free-spiritedness, loyalty, generosity and sincere love and care. She was, and at the same time, the Elise that you all knew had gone a while ago.
While we grieve her loss, that Elise was taken, whenever you want to say that time was, we also temper it with the relief that she no longer suffers. She has been released to a place where the MS cannot touch her, where suffering is no more. She left too soon in the fact that she was 63, which is well too young, and that it would have been much preferred if she didn’t acquire MS. We all would have preferred for a much different reality, and it is appropriate to grieve because of that. But, we believe that she now lives in the full presence of God. We believe, to use the words Paul wrote as read in I Corinthians 13, that she knows fully, as she is fully known, by the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of all life. We believe that she lives on, that she has gone home. We believe in the resurrection of the body, that she has become again the Elise that you know and love. And there is joy which is tempered by our grief, in the fact that she has gone on where she no longer suffers. Amen.
Since the church and our most used creed was such a part of Elise’s life, we are going to offer you the chance to say it with us this afternoon. If this creed is a part of your tradition of faith, we invite you to join as we say what we believe.
Committal Prayer
Into your hands, O God we commend your servant Elise. Receive, we humbly pray, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive her into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints of light. Amen
The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters; he restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness, for his name’s sake. Yeah, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff – they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.